Sunday, 26 January 2014

‘The Grammar of Anarchy’ Debate: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

Note: This is an excerpt
from Ambedkar's speech made in the Constituent Assembly, on November 25th, 1949
(Constituent Assembly of India - Volume XI). The full debate can be
accessed here.

On
26th January 1950, India will be an independent country. What
would happen to her independence? Will she maintain her independence or will
she lose it again? This is the first thought that comes to my mind. It is not
that India was never an independent country. The point is that she once lost
the independence she had. Will she lose it a second time? It is this thought
which makes me most anxious for the future. What perturbs me greatly is the
fact that not only India has once before lost her independence, but she lost it
by the infidelity and treachery of some of her own people. In the invasion of
Sind by Mahommed-Bin-Kasim, the military commanders of King Dahar accepted
bribes from the agents of Mahommed-Bin-Kasim and refused to fight on the side
of their King. It was Jaichand who invited Mahommed Gohri to invade India and
fight against Prithvi Raj and promised him the help of himself and the Solanki
Kings. When Shivaji was fighting for the liberation of Hindus, the other
Maratha noblemen and the Rajput Kings were fighting the battle on the side of
Moghul Emperors. When the British were trying to destroy the Sikh Rulers, Gulab
Singh, their principal commander sat silent and did not help to save the Sikh
Kingdom. In 1857, when a large part of India had declared a war of independence
against the British, the Sikhs stood and watched the event as silent
spectators.

Will history repeat itself? It is this thought
which fills me with anxiety. This anxiety is deepened by the realization of the
fact that in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we
are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political
creeds. Will Indian place the country above their creed or will they place
creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the
parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a
second time and probably be lost for ever. This eventuality we must all
resolutely guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with
the last drop of our blood.

On the 26th of January 1950, India
would be a democratic country in the sense that India from that day would have
a government of the people, by the people and for the people. The same thought
comes to my mind. What would happen to her democratic Constitution? Will she be
able to maintain it or will she lose it again? This is the second thought that
comes to my mind and makes me as anxious as the first.

It is not that India did not know what Democracy
is. There was a time when India was studded with republics, and even where
there were monarchies, they were either elected or limited. They were never
absolute. It is not that India did not know Parliaments or Parliamentary
Procedure. A study of the Buddhist Bhikshu Sanghas discloses that not only
there were Parliaments-for the Sanghas were nothing but Parliaments – but the
Sanghas knew and observed all the rules of Parliamentary Procedure known to
modern times. They had rules regarding seating arrangements, rules regarding
Motions, Resolutions, Quorum, Whip, Counting of Votes, Voting by Ballot,
Censure Motion, Regularization, Res Judicata, etc. Although these
rules of Parliamentary Procedure were applied by the Buddha to the meetings of
the Sanghas, he must have borrowed them from the rules of the Political
Assemblies functioning in the country in his time.

This democratic system India lost. Will she lose it
a second time? I do not know. But it is quite possible in a country like India
– where democracy from its long disuse must be regarded as something quite new
– there is danger of democracy giving place to dictatorship. It is quite
possible for this new born democracy to retain its form but give place to
dictatorship in fact. If there is a landslide, the danger of the second
possibility becoming actuality is much greater.

If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in
form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgement we
must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and
economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution.
It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation
and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional
methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of
justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods
are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods.
These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are
abandoned, the better for us.

The second thing we must do is to observe the
caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the
maintenance of democracy, namely, not “to lay their liberties at the feet of
even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their
institutions”. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have
rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to
gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish Patriot Daniel O'Connel, no
man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the
cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty.
This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any
other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion
or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the
part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in
religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or
hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.

The third thing we must do is not to be content
with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social
democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies, at the
base of it, social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way
of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of
life…[And] these principles…are not to be treated
as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that
to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.
Liberty cannot be divorced from equality; equality cannot be divorced from
liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without
equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many.
Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity,
liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many; without
fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things.
It would require a constable to enforce them. We must begin by acknowledging
the fact that there is complete absence of two things in Indian Society. One of
these is equality. On the social plane, we have in India a society based on the
principle of graded inequality which we have a society in which there are some
who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty.

On the 26th of January 1950, we are
going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality
and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be
recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our
social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic
structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall
we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to
deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for
long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must
remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who
suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which
is Assembly has to laboriously built up.

The second thing we are wanting in is recognition
of the principle of fraternity. What does fraternity mean? Fraternity means a
sense of common brotherhood of all Indians – if Indians being one people. It is
the principle which gives unity and solidarity to social life. It is a
difficult thing to achieve. How difficult it is, can be realized from the story
related by James Bryce in his volume on American Commonwealth about the United
States of America.

The story is – I propose to
recount it in the words of Bryce himself – that:

“Some years ago the American
Protestant Episcopal Church was occupied at its triennial Convention in
revising its liturgy. It was thought desirable to introduce among the short
sentence prayers a prayer for the whole people, and an eminent New
England divine proposed the words `O Lord, bless our nation'. Accepted one
afternoon, on the spur of the moment, the sentence was brought up next day for
reconsideration, when so many objections were raised by the laity to the word
nation' as importing too definite a recognition of national unity, that it was
dropped, and instead there were adopted the words `O Lord, bless these United
States.”

There was so little solidarity
in the U.S.A. at the time when this incident occurred that the people of
America did not think that they were a nation. If the people of the United
States could not feel that they were a nation, how difficult it is for Indians
to think that they are a nation. I remember the days when politically-minded
Indians, resented the expression “the people of India”. They preferred the
expression “the Indian nation”. I am of opinion that in believing that we are a
nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. How can people divided into several
thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realize that we are not as yet a
nation in the social and psychological sense of the world, the better for us.
For then only we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously
think of ways and means of realizing the goal. The realization of this goal is
going to be very difficult – far more difficult than it has been in the United
States. The United States has no caste problem. In India there are castes. The
castes are anti-national. In the first place, because they bring about
separation in social life. They are anti-national also because they generate
jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste. But we must overcome all these
difficulties if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity can be a
fact only when there is a nation. Without fraternity equality and liberty will
be no deeper than coats of paint.

These are my reflections about
the tasks that lie ahead of us. They may not be very pleasant to some. But
there can be no gainsaying that political power in this country has too long been
the monopoly of a few and the many are only beasts of burden, but also beasts
of prey. This monopoly has not merely deprived them of their chance of
betterment, it has sapped them of what may be called the significance of life.
These down-trodden classes are tired of being governed. They are impatient to
govern themselves. This urge for self-realization in the down-trodden classes
must not be allowed to devolve into a class struggle or class war. It would
lead to a division of the House. That would indeed be a day of disaster. For,
as has been well said by Abraham Lincoln, a House divided against itself cannot
stand very long. Therefore the sooner room is made for the realization of their
aspiration, the better for the few, the better for the country, the better for
the maintenance for its independence and the better for the continuance of its
democratic structure. This can only be done by the establishment of equality
and fraternity in all spheres of life. That is why I have laid so much stresses
on them.

I do not wish to weary the House
any further. Independence is no doubt a matter of joy. But let us not forget
that this independence has thrown on us great responsibilities. By
independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going
wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except
ourselves. There is great danger of things going wrong. Times are fast
changing. People including our own are being moved by new ideologies. They are
getting tired of Government by the people. They are prepared to have
Governments for the people and are indifferent whether it is Government of the
people and by the people. If we wish to preserve the Constitution in which we
have sought to enshrine the principle of Government of the people, for the
people and by the people, let us resolve not to be tardy in the recognition of
the evils that lie across our path and which induce people to prefer Government
for the people to Government by the people, nor to be weak in our initiative to
remove them. That is the only way to serve the country. I know of no better.